


Windmill Boy

by malrie



Category: One Piece
Genre: Foreshadowing, Gen, Kid Fic, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26378551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malrie/pseuds/malrie
Summary: At three years old, Luffy’s rounded out an entire personality, and it excites Makino as much as it makes her wary. He’s started putting on brave faces after nasty falls, and tosses the greens off his plate as soon as she turns her back. She’d never truly appreciated the speed at which children grew until the one baby she’d had sprouted quicker than a seed in wet soil.
Relationships: Makino & Monkey D. Luffy
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	Windmill Boy

At three years old, Luffy’s rounded out an entire personality, and it excites Makino as much as it makes her wary. He’s started putting on brave faces after nasty falls, and tosses the greens off his plate as soon as she turns her back. She’d never truly appreciated the speed at which children grew until the one baby she’d had sprouted quicker than a seed in wet soil.

Makino holds Luffy in her arms as they walk, chin set over her shoulder. She feels his mouth open and close from boredom, his cheek occasionally lolling to press against her neck.

She normally allows him to run free and lollygag at his pace, as long as he’s somewhere in her line of sight. Last night, however, had marked a break in a week-long fever. While Luffy himself is certainly up for laps around the village, his body is far from it. She thought he might benefit from the fresh air.

In her shoulder bag lays a lovingly-aged wine bottle for trading quality meat at the butcher’s. Foosha’s economy, nonexistent as it seems, relies heavily on bartering for menial groceries. The old man down the lane once traded his gleaming gold tooth for a basket of beans during a particularly bad scarcity. Even now, Luffy yells “Beans!” each time they pass his porch.

“Play a game?”

Makino smiles fondly. “What should we play?”

“Pirates!”

Garp will come for her head. “Luffy, pirates are bad,” she recites, stifling a laugh.

“Pirates are bad?” She feels him lift his chin, then settle it back down. “Because Grandpa gets pirates.”

“Mmm,” she hums. “That’s why Grandpa’s away. He gets the bad guys.”

“Bad guys,” Luffy says. Clearly it doesn’t phase him, because next he explains: “I play pirates and you play Grandpa.”

What could it hurt? Makino brings her free hand to tickle his side and pitches her voice an octave lower. “I’ve got you, pirate! Surrender or die!”

“No, no, no!” Giggling, Luffy thrashes wildly in her hold, nearly bowling over them both. Makino joins his laughter in pure elation.

Often Makino finds herself wishing he stayed little forever. She was no one’s family for a very long time, until Garp came along. If she craved to be someone’s world for a change, who could blame her?

Even so, Luffy is Luffy. When he had been only a few months old, his curious eyes had already begun chasing the clouds as they moved beyond the horizon; Makino has always had an inkling of what fate awaits.

At the butcher’s, Makino selects the thickest cuts of meat. Luffy is underweight for his age range—she had cross-referenced with the village mothers. Now she worries about his speedy metabolism. The butcher double wraps it in brown paper and Luffy watches with his fist in his mouth, hypnotized.

“That’s meat?” her baby asks after Makino gently takes out his hand. “Can I eat now?”

“We have to cook it first, sweetheart,” she explains, sending a small smile to the man behind the counter. Like nearly everyone in this village, he was someone Makino had known since childhood. They’d gone to the same schoolhouse together, and more than once he’d tried to court her. That had stopped quite abruptly after Luffy—most things did.

“I could throw in a couple grilled meat skewers if the kid wants something to snack on,” the man offers, nodding at Luffy. “My wife’s merging us to a deli.”

“Oh,” she says idly, “how much?”

“On the house,” he replies easily.

“That’s very kind of you.” Makino tries not to feel embarrassed at the mention of a wife. She hadn’t known he married anyone. “Luffy, he’s going to give you food for free. What do we say?”

Luffy tilts his head, thinking. He purses his lips, then bobs his head in decision.

“Meat!”

* * *

It’s a very blue day. The clouds hovered heavy over the ocean; star-crossed lovers. Makino’s hair fights against the salty breeze, loosening her bandana. She watches Luffy standing at the edge of the water, giggling to himself about the feeling underfoot.

During the peak of his sickness, he had shivered and sweated and looked so small underneath the blankets that Makino feared the worst. She’d called Garp, feeling lost and alone, but her Den Den Mushi rerouted to the local Marine base islands away. Monkey D. Garp was off on a job, and it angered her more than it ever had before.

This was _his_ grandson, so where was he? Three years ago, the man who had raised her had come to her doorstop with a bundle one hand, effectively sealing Makino’s fate forever. She quit school. She took up the bar. She stopped dreaming of places beyond these windmills. One after the other, these were her choices—hard ones to make, but hers.

The bitterness had chipped away in its earliest stages: Luffy is more than she could have ever asked for and far from what she deserved. But she was only human, and when the graveyard shifts ran long or Luffy’s tantrums went uncontainable, she could only blame it on the seas that were never hers to cross.

“Don’t run in too far,” she warns, spotting Luffy tumble into the wet sand from the pull of the waves.

In response, the boy laughs some more. He gets up on his own. “Makino! The water!”

It cracks open her mood. She’s brought back again to Foosha—to Luffy. They upend their winnings from the-butcher-that-is-not-in-love-with-Makino onto the picnic blanket and eat around their kebabs, watching as the sun wanes lazily over their beloved island.

Soon Makino finds herself with her skirt hitched up to her thighs in the water, Luffy hanging tight to her arms. He struggles constantly, too nervous to stay still. She’d been like that once.

“Try to let go,” she coaxes him.

Luffy whines. “No!”

Bigger waves push into her mouth. “I’ll put my arms beneath you, so that I’ll be there to catch you before you drift away.”

He mulls it over, grip loosening ever so slightly. “Okay. Catch me?”

Makino of Foosha Village is the only witness at Monkey D. Luffy’s first float. His dark baby hairs drip with sea water and the whites of his eyes are irritated from tears and salt. But he stares at the sky in unabashed awe, as though the world has peeled down to reveal something just for him.

Just as promised, Makino catches him as he drifts; the disappointment she sees in his face makes her hold on tighter than she should.

* * *

They pack up from the beach wind-burned and tired. Makino has to lift a drooping Luffy onto her back. Still wet, each step of her sandals on the road sounded off squelching. Despite the exhaustion, they take the scenic route back and let the retreating sun warm their backs.

Long circulating shadows stretch closer; the slow grinding gears of Foosha’s windmills reach their ears. As the pride of town, the windmills generate jobs, occasionally tourists. A majority of the people Makino went to school with ended up on a miller’s paycheck, and if Garp hadn’t bought off Party’s, she’d probably be in the towers alongside them.

Wildly, she imagines a future of Luffy’s, tall like his grandfather, with one of her own bandanas to tie down his mop of dark hair. Would he work in the mills? If he stayed, he might. It was the fate of Foosha youth. Would he be popular? Quiet? Contemplative? Maybe rowdy, instead? Would he infuriate Woop Slap as much as she had? Would he have a laugh like hers? That was possible; she had one like Garp’s, who had raised her. After years gone by, would Luffy still look at her like—would he look at her at all?

The fantasy stops there. It’s a difficult line of thought to continue, considering what she knows in her heart of hearts. Like a curse, or something as horrible as fate. What is an island barmaid to all beyond the horizon?

Luffy is half-asleep by the time they cross Windmill Lane, but he lifts his head up to watch the swirl of the blades, mesmerized by the movement. She waits patiently for his routine admiration, when Luffy would gape at their monstrous sizes, bigger than anything in their tiny village. Nothing came close to their gargantuan presence, and even after all these years Makino finds herself at her bedroom window to watch the syncopated dance of the windmills.

“Oh,” he says after a time, a conclusion to a conversation they’d never had. “Small.”

Makino has felt the rhythm of his breathing syncing with her own until now, when her’s begins to catch. Luffy’s breath runs ahead, without waiting. The countdown has begun.


End file.
